...And some don't see the two as mutually exclusive, but recognize that opinions either way fall outside the purview of science.
Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
In the end, that's what it's all about. And you will know them by what they do.
...And some don't see the two as mutually exclusive, but recognize that opinions either way fall outside the purview of science.
Some of us don't need a scary man in the sky to tell us what's right & wrong
The theory of "irreducible complexity" has nothing to do with an inability to explain how a feature came to be -- it is based on the fact, wholly supported by science, that if (for example) you change even 0.1% of the "ingredients" in a human eye, what you are left with no longer functions as an eye.
Ironically, Steven Jay Gould himself was driven to abandon his earlier notions of gradual evolution because even he couldn't quite explain how a human eye could have evolved if 99.9% of an eye couldn't see, how a mosquito wing could have evolved if 99.9% of a wing wouldn't lift it off the ground, etc. He came up with his theory of "punctuated equilibrium," which states that individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety. Interestingly, it should be pointed out that there is no more evidence of "punctuated equilibrium" than there was of Darwin's "pure" evolution.
Well, that's one way to burn.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Exactly..and what Gould and others did was to rhetorically repackage the hoary and discredited "Hopeful Monster" theory. Evolutionists are on the run and their hissing and squealing is a bit reminiscent of their putative progenitors - reptiles and pterodactyls.
Oh, be serious. There have been good and bad Creationists, as well as good and bad Evolutionists.
If you assert that one group is on a higher moral plane than the other, you've left science yourself.
This is a gross distortion of Gould's position. He didn't believe that individual elements in an organism evolve in their entirety. Did you ever read Gould?
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